Like Pablo Honey, Amnesiac is something of a victim of circumstance. It was recorded during the same sessions asKid A and was released just a year later. Consequently, Amnesiac is frequently written off as a B-sides collection -- an impression that its clunky reworking of the Kid A track "Morning Bell" reinforces.

But aside from the "Morning Bell" misstep, Amnesiac is a grossly underrated album with its own personality -- tauter than In Rainbows, starker than The King Of Limbs, and better-developed than Pablo Honey. There's plenty of Kid A-styled programming here, especially on opener "Pakt Like Sardines In A Crushed Tin Can" and in the nauseating churn of "Pulk/Pull Revolving Doors." Other cuts allow more air inside; "I Might Be Wrong" and "Knives Out" unfold from clattery single-coil riffs. "Pyramid Song" remains a fan favorite; according to Ed O'Brien, Yorke once called it "the best thing we've committed to tape, ever."

Amnesiac's most striking feature may be the anger that bubbles beneath its surface. Where Kid A consigned itself to fate, Amnesiac simmers with barely suppressed rage. Yorke's little-man protagonists get belligerent in the face of their own abjection. "I'm a reasonable man, get off my case," he insists on "Pakt Like Sardines." He even beats his chest on "You And Whose Army?" -- "Come on if you think / you can take us on." "Dollars and Cents" sees him switching perspective, speaking for callous market forces: "We are the dollars and cents, and the pounds and pence, and the mark and yen / We're gonna crack your little souls, yeah, we're gonna crack your little souls." Yikes.

“Big things have small beginnings.” So says Michael Fassbender’s character in Prometheus. He was referring to a blob of alien goo that would go on to spawn the monster that drives the Alien series, but he just as easily could’ve been talking about Radiohead.

Like that daub of black goo, Radiohead’s origins were inauspicious. The band — consisting throughout its existence of Thom Yorke (vocals, guitar, piano, electronics), Jonny Greenwood (lead guitar, various other instruments), Colin Greenwood (bass, synths), Ed O’Brien (guitar, backing vocals), and Phil Selway (drums) — formed in 1985 in the music rehearsal room of their Oxfordshire boys’ school. The band’s awkward original moniker was On A Friday — their usual practice time.

Unlike so many of their contemporaries, On A Friday did not spend years slugging it out in the indie tour circuit before achieving broader success — their path to glory was more in the classic-rock mold. After a university-born hiatus through the late ’80s, On A Friday signed a six-album deal with EMI without ever touring. Pressured by their label, the band changed their name to Radiohead, after a Talking Heads song. A year later, the band recorded a song called “Creep,” and the rest is history.

When most people think of Radiohead now, they think of Radiohead the iconoclasts: the band that resurrected progressive rock with OK Computer, dove headlong into experimental music with Kid A, and precipitated an entirely new business model with In Rainbows. For a high-profile band with so much to lose, Radiohead has historically been relentlessly ambitious. No two of their albums sound alike. (Not even Kid A and Amnesiac — more on that later.)

But Radiohead has achieved their status as one of the last consensus-building rock bands because of their broad populist streak. That populism is musical as well as political. Even at their most challenging and experimental, Radiohead ruthlessly edits their music into catchy, pop-sized chunks. Beneath the swathes of digital gauze and strange sound is a Beatles-style hit machine.

After eight albums, Radiohead may be close to the end of their creative arc. The band has expressed growing (and characteristic!) dissatisfaction with the process of writing and recording albums. Said Yorke during the press cycle for The King Of Limbs: “None of us want to go into that creative hoo-hah of a long-play record again … I mean, it’s just become a real drag.” (Then again, The King Of Limbs concludes with Yorke informing the listener that, “If you think this is over, then you’re wrong.”)

So now is as good of a time as any to reflect on Radiohead’s catalog. Here are all eight of their full-length albums, analyzed and examined, and ranked from worst to best. If you disagree — and oh, will some of you ever disagree — then feel free to crush my list like a bug in the ground with your comments.

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